How PropVitals scores prop firms (rubric v1.4, 6 October 2026)

What the score is for

A PropVitals score answers one question: based only on facts we can show you, how safe and how fair is it to pay this firm for an evaluation? Every point comes from a documented fact with a source and a date. If we have no fact for something, we don't guess. We leave that item out and show how much of the score is backed by evidence.

The method is published in full so you can recompute any score yourself. Every firm page lists the fact, source and date behind each item.

What changed, and why

Every version was drafted before publication. Each change is a general rule applied to every firm at the same time, and no score was adjusted afterwards to hit a target.

• v1.0 was the first internal draft.
• v1.1 adopted principles 1 to 6. v1.0 scored missing evidence as 0, which penalised firms that pay by bank transfer. It also let a site that promotes competing firms lower a score, and it penalised the one firm we had checked on Trustpilot replies.
• v1.2 added principle 7, the proof-bonus rule. Before it, a firm with partial independent proof could score lower than an otherwise identical firm with none.
• v1.3 applied fixes from an outside review:
  • "Checked" now has one definition.
  • A daily loss limit whose effect isn't documented is unknown, instead of being assumed to fail the account.
  • Founding years need the firm's own page or an independent source.
  • Prices from third-party sources are labelled.
  • We added facts read directly from The5ers' and Take Profit Trader's sites on 6 October 2026, and rechecked The Funded Trader's sites on 5 October 2026.
• v1.4 applied a second round of review fixes:
  • Every "checked, not stated" entry now names the page that was read and the date.
  • Evidence must link to the firm page, tracker or third party it comes from. A PropVitals guide alone is not enough.
  • A plan's rules come from the latest direct read of its own page (principle 8).
  • The edges of the V1 price bands are now stated exactly.

Principles

1. Missing evidence is never counted against a firm. If we have no positive independent evidence for something, that item is unknown and left out, not scored 0. This rule has no exceptions. For example, a daily loss limit counts against a firm only once its effect (pausing the day or failing the account) is documented. Disclosure is different: when we checked a firm's pages and found nothing published, that is a documented fact about the firm, and it is scored (see P3 and T3).
2. Incident reports need independent sources. Only independent outlets can lower a payout-incident score. Sites that promote competing firms or sell affiliate or listing placements may be quoted as context, but they are never scored.
3. A criterion must be checked across at least 5 firms. A criterion counts only if it has been checked for at least 5 of the 15 firms. Below that, it is switched off for every firm, so checking one firm can't penalise that firm alone.
   • Checked means we looked for the fact where it can appear (the firm's official pages, or for P1 the independent payout trackers in our review) and recorded either the fact or "not stated". This definition applies to every entry.
   • Every "checked" entry, including "checked, not stated", cites the page that was read and the date.
   • A PropVitals guide counts as evidence only when it quotes a dated firm page (or a named, linkable third party) that the entry also cites. PropVitals' own dated checks also count: the payout-evidence review and our HTTP checks.
   • A fact we can't link to its origin is unknown. This applies to founding years found only in our guides, a figure from an unlinked leaderboard, and a founder's post with no link.
4. No weight goes on something nobody has checked. We haven't yet searched regulator or court records for any firm, so that criterion has been removed. It will return when that search is done.
5. Red requires a reason. A firm can only be Red (below 40) if a hard cap applies or we have documented a negative finding. A low number caused only by missing evidence is floored at 40 and labelled Provisional.
6. Rules and price use each firm's friendliest documented plan. We say this plainly because it mixes plans (see "Which plan we score").
7. Independent verification can only add credit, never subtract. A "proof bonus" is a criterion where having no evidence is unknown, and the lowest score you can earn is above 0. For each proof bonus, every category subtotal and the total are calculated with and without it, and the higher result is used. Only P1 (independent payout verification) fits this definition. P3 and T3 can score 0 for documented non-disclosure, so they measure disclosure, not proof.
8. The latest direct read of a plan's own page decides that plan's rules. If two reads of the same plan page disagree, the newer one is used. If a plan page doesn't mention a rule, a statement about that rule on another official page (for example an FAQ) still counts, and the entry cites that page.

What is NOT scored

• Whether a firm pays us. Affiliate status, commission rates and referral deals are not inputs. No criterion refers to them, and firms that pay us are scored by exactly the same rules as firms that don't.
• Marketing spend, advertising, discount codes, sponsorships or social-media presence.
• Our opinion of a firm's brand, people or style. Every criterion is a lookup against a table, not a judgement.

How a score is calculated

1. Each criterion gets 0 to 100 points from its table. A criterion with no documented fact is unknown and is left out.
2. Weighted average = (sum of points × weight for known criteria) ÷ (sum of weights of known criteria).
3. Proof-bonus rule: the score before caps is the higher of the weighted average with P1 included and with P1 excluded.
4. The Red floor (F1) is applied, then the hard caps. The result is rounded to the nearest whole number (.5 rounds up), once, at the end.
5. Evidence coverage = the share of the 100 weight points that are known, counting P1 whenever it is known, even if the total was calculated without it. Coverage is shown next to every score.

A category subtotal is the same weighted average using only that category's criteria. The proof-bonus rule applies to it too, and it is rounded the same way. Each firm's record publishes its total, uncapped score, subtotals, coverage, Provisional flag, band and the caps that triggered, so anyone can check our arithmetic.

Active criteria and weights. Each criterion has a base weight. If a criterion is switched off under the 5-firm rule, its weight is shared out among the other criteria in the same category, in proportion to their base weights. Rounding uses the largest-remainder method, so every category keeps its total.

Provisional scores. If coverage is below 50%, or the F1 floor applied, the score is labelled Provisional and capped at 69 (C3). A firm can't be rated Healthy when we can verify less than half of what Healthy means.

What counts as evidence:

• a firm's own published page, read on a stated date
• a named independent tracker or reviewer
• a named third party for a specific fact, with a link, labelled as third-party
• a check we ran ourselves (for example HTTP checks of a firm's website), with its date

Which plan we score

Rule and price criteria use each firm's friendliest documented plan. For each rule or price criterion we score the most trader-friendly plan the firm currently sells for which we have documented the fact, and the note names the plan. Different criteria can therefore come from different plans of the same firm, so the combination we score may not exist as a single plan you can buy. Instant-funding plans (no evaluation) are left out of the evaluation-stage criteria: daily loss limit, time limit and minimum days.

Categories and weights (v1.4)

Why these weights: the main risk in buying an evaluation is not getting paid, so payout evidence carries the most weight. Trust and transparency come next because they predict whether the payout record will last. Rules and price matter, but a cheap evaluation with friendly rules is worthless if the firm doesn't pay.

Changes from the five starting categories:

• Payout cadence moved into category 1.
• Fee refund is scored once, under price.
• Category 5 is "Platform and payout methods". None of our sources contain measurable support data, so support is not scored.

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1. Payout record and proof (40)

P1 · Independent payout verification (15). Proof bonus.

P2 · Payout incidents (15)

Only independent outlets count, and each firm page says why we consider a source independent.

P3 · Published payout total (5)

P4 · Payout cadence (5)

2. Trust, longevity and transparency (25)

T2 · Legal entity disclosed (8)

T3 · Published funnel (11)

T5 · Operating status (6)

T1 · Years operating as a prop firm (switched off in v1.4)

The start year must come from the firm's own page or an independent source. Years = 2026 minus the start year: 10 or more = 100; 7-9 = 80; 4-6 = 60; 2-3 = 40; 1 = 20; 0 = 0.

T6 · Public complaint handling (switched off in v1.4)

Share of negative Trustpilot reviews with a reply from the firm: 50% or more = 100; 1-49% = 50; 0% = 0.

3. Rule friendliness for traders (20)

R1 · Daily loss limit, evaluation stage (5)

R2 · Consistency rule at the funded or payout stage (5)

R3 · News trading on funded accounts (4)

R4 · Evaluation time limit (3)

R5 · Minimum trading days to pass (3)

4. Price and value (10)

V1 · Cost per $1,000 of loss allowance (5)

Cost = fee to reach a funded account (evaluation fee + any activation fee + one month of any subscription) ÷ (maximum loss in dollars ÷ 1,000). We take the lowest value across plans with both a documented price and a documented maximum loss. Pricing rules:

• Where a list price and a promotion are both shown, we use the list price.
• A limited-time offer shown without a list price is not used.
• EUR is converted to USD at 1.087.
• Third-party prices are used only with a link, and are labelled.

Each band includes its upper bound, so the bands don't overlap.

V2 · Fee refund (3)

V3 · Fee model (2)

5. Platform and payout methods (5)

X1 · Trading platform choice (3)

3 or more named platforms = 100; 2 = 60; 1, or an in-house platform only = 30.

X2 · Payout methods (2)

Scored only when the firm's full list of methods is documented. 3 or more = 100; 2 = 60; 1 = 30.

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Hard caps and the Red floor

A tight trading rule is a fact about the product, not a negative finding about the firm's safety, so on its own it cannot make a firm Red. A Red band produced by a hard cap is displayed with its reason and cap, for example "Red: official site offline (C1), Provisional".

Score bands

How and when scores are reviewed

Scores are reviewed by hand. There is no automated pipeline. A reviewer reads the firm's own pages and the named sources, records each fact with its source and the date checked, and recalculates the score with the formula above. Every criterion and every score shows its as-of date. Firm pages show how long ago the score was reviewed, so you can see when a record is old.

We don't promise a fixed review schedule. A payout pause, an offline site or a regulatory action triggers a review of that firm as soon as we learn of it. If you think a fact is wrong or out of date, send it with a source and we'll recheck it.

Known limitations

• Several scores sit close to a band boundary.

  • Apex (75) depends on our decision not to score ImanTrading, a critic site that promotes competing firms, on payout incidents. If that site's report were scored as an unverified incident (P2 = 50), Apex would score 64 (Yellow). Apex's price subtotal (100) rests on one fact, its one-time fee. No Apex price is linkable (prices appear only at checkout), so its cost-per-$1,000 item (V1) is unknown.
  • The5ers (72) is two points above the Healthy line.

• Three criteria sit exactly at the 5-firm minimum: legal entity (T2), news trading (R3) and fee refund (V2). One fact more or less switches them on or off for every firm; for example, losing any one of the five legal-entity facts would switch T2 off and move several scores.

• Some scores rest on very few rule facts. Propr's rules subtotal (100) comes from one fact: it has no time limit. Topstep's coverage is 61%.

• Operating status (T5) carries 6 of the 25 trust points, because years operating and complaint handling are switched off. Every reachable firm gets the full 6.

• Founding years are unscored. Only FTMO's and The5ers' own pages state theirs, so long track records (for example Topstep's) get no credit.

• Sensitivity of the 5-firm rule. We count a firm towards the 5-firm minimum when the fact was checked, even if the result was unknown. If only scored firms counted, P1 and V2 would be switched off. Totals would then be:

  Firm	Literal reading	Current
  Topstep	92	93
  FTMO	86	84
  FundedNext	81	82
  Apex	79	75
  Propr	79	76
  MyFundedFutures	78	84
  Take Profit Trader	77	78
  HyroTrader	71	65
  The5ers	67	72
  SizeProp	67	63
  Goat Funded Trader	66 (Provisional)	58
  Earn2Trade	65	62
  FunderPro	65	62
  Maven	57	52
  The Funded Trader	0	0

  Under that reading HyroTrader would become Healthy and The5ers Yellow.

• Independent proof earns no extra credit when a firm's other evidence is already strong. For firms that have no independent verification, self-reported totals carry most of the payout score.

• "No incidents" depends on how wide we searched. P2 = 100 means our payout-evidence review covered the firm and recorded nothing.

• Independence is judged from what our sources record. For example, we list no affiliate tie between The Industry Spread and the firms it reviews, but we haven't audited its business model.

• The friendliest-plan rule mixes facts from different plans. The5ers' daily-loss score comes from its Bootcamp evaluation steps (no daily rule; read 6 October 2026), while its Hyper Growth page contradicts itself.

• Promotional pages count as official pages. Take Profit Trader's consistency, time-limit and payout facts come partly from its NOFEE40 promotional FAQ.

• The Funded Trader's 2024 payout pause is not scored. Our records mention it but name no independent outlet. The firm's Red comes from cap C1: all three of its domains returned HTTP 402 (deployment disabled) on 4 September and 5 October 2026.

• A score is a summary. Read the facts on the firm page and check them against the firm's current checkout before you pay.

Current scores